


Dauldermize: A God's Chronicle

by StorytellerSecrets



Series: Dauldermize [1]
Category: Dauldermize: A God's Chronicle
Genre: Ajiur no that's not how you deal with feelings, Angst, Eeyns, Elkdridge, Elves, F/M, Faeries - Freeform, Fantasy, Gen, Gods, Junid Is An Asshole (Dauldermize), M/M, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sad with a Sad Ending, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Tragedy, Tragedy/Comedy, Tragic Romance, Töor Is The Mom Friend (Dauldermize), Written for a Class, everyone dies, like for real what a cranky grandma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-23 20:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17690162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StorytellerSecrets/pseuds/StorytellerSecrets
Summary: It started with a falling star.Stories would say the great marksman Daelius shot it out of the sky to impress his lover, Fael, the goddess of divinity and virtue.Stories would be wrong.





	1. 1.1

_“Careful watch for when a star falls,_

_a God has truly left these walls."_

 

-:-

 

 

-:-

 

It started with a falling star. Stories would say the great marksman Daelius shot it out of the sky to impress his lover, Fael, the goddess of divinity and virtue. Stories would be wrong.

In reality, Daelius was the one shot down. With a deafening boom, his body crashed against the sand, a deep red spilling onto the tawny grains. He gurgled, crimson slick filling his throat, and his heavy eyes drew to a close. He should’ve died. He would’ve, certainly, if Töor hadn’t found him.

 

She was the goddess of healing, and the goddess of animals. She was ancient and ethereal and entirely old. Wrinkles framed her face like the inscriptions of sidewinder snakes, lateral lines tracking the sand of her figure. She walked with a limp from an injury she didn’t remember and she used a wooden cane carved from the roots of an Epiphous tree, and she traveled the desert in search of a pupil. She found one when a dying god fell out of the sky.

 

It took her ninety-three days. Ninety-three days; two-thousand and seventeen hours; that’s how long it took for her to heal the broken god of the rain. Ninety-three days of magic and healing and the hot, sickening feeling that it was all for nothing. That feeling lingered, churning in her gut with acrid prickles to the tune of her throbbing temples. It never really went away.

 

Healing the rain god was by far the hardest thing Töor had ever done. She was the goddess of healing and animals, yes, but the goddess of stamina she was not. And it was hot, and warm, and dry, and she was old, and tired, and ill. Töor spent many of her days drifting in and out of consciousness as she healed him, never with more than a moment’s rest. Her eyes dulled under the summer sun and pricks of color dotted her cheeks. Her face grew sallow, and the hollows of her cheekbones deepened.

 

As life was poured into the fingertips of Daelius, it was vacuumed out of her. She was dying. She could tell she was wasting away as she slaved over a god she did not know, lying on the desert floor. She could tell it was worth it, even if it killed her. Which was good, because it almost did.

 

Now, she knew she was wearing herself thin, but by how much, she couldn’t tell. Not until the Dadr came. Töor didn’t see it, at first, because it was nearly buried in sand and she’d had other, more pressing things to worry about. But there it was, settled in the silver-grey sand, a creature that stood for nothing but death and depravity.

 

Once she did see it, however, she ignored it, but that small seed of nihilistic doubt whispered to her. “It was here for Daelius, the god who had lain in the sand all through Ashtun and half-way through Ashta,” it whispered snidely. Like the Dadr, she ignored that, too. It worked, for the most part.

 

On day eighty-five, Töor dragged Daelius to the garden of Edën. Well, she _finished_ dragging the six-foot god to Edën on day eighty-five. She _started_ long before that. Once she finally got there, Töor felt like a fool. She should’ve brought them both there ages ago, with the sweet smell of summer fruit and the rich, clean water from the spring. The very thought of these things made her mouth water. But by far, the most important was the change of tone.

 

Voices can change pitch and tone. Töor knows this. She’s heard her very own voice go through many of those changes. But, as Töor also knows, voices are not the only thing that can change in that way. Magic, too, can shift with the tides (ignoring that the tides are, in fact, inherently magic).

 

The desert of what would be Dedrix was dry and bitter. It tasted like fire and salt and something so sickly sweet that the first time Töor encountered it, when she was young and able-bodied, she spent the following thirty minutes dry-heaving onto the sandy floor. Once, when she had returned to Vorta, she told the trees and the squirrels and the fey that weren’t terrified of her about her plight, and in return they told her.

 

“The forests are the place of beasts,” an elkdridge said, nudging her shoulder with the blunt end of his antler. Töor went to shake her head, but thought better of it. He knew far more than she could ever hope to.

 

Instead, she called, “and what of the desert?” The elkdridge walked away. She frowned before a rustling of leaves to her right lead her face-to-face with Emojiit, the local Eeyn. He was then in the form of a fey, ears perked up like a rabbit’s and eyes like a goat’s. Elkdridge hated Eeyns.

 

“What _of_ the desert?” he asks flippantly with a grin made of canines. It’s not malicious by any means, but it still sends a twinge of instinctual fear through her. He is so much stronger than she, even at three thousand years younger.

 

Töor sighs a dramatic sigh, “why is it so awful?” and the only answer she can formulate is that it simply is. However, Emojiit is not her, and his responses have been and will always be superior to her own.

 

“Maybe it’s just you that thinks it’s awful?” he shoots back and she pouts.

 

“No way. That place is the most awful place of places, Eem.” His shark-tooth grin is back.

 

“Oooor maybe it’s just you that’s awful, ever think of that?” Töor raises her hand to her chest in faux-disbelief.

 

“How dare. I am a _god_ ,” she says. He shrugs his plated shoulders, nonplussed.

 

“A baby god, maybe.” She glares her most ferocious glare, positively enraged. After a moment of silence, she springs forward onto the boy and they topple down into the grass. Their limbs tangle like a thorn-bush twists around Jeromni flowers and they wrestle like pups. Töor ends at the top, her limbs splayed like a fish above water. They’re both laughing, hot and breathy and filled with a childish wonder.

 

“I am a god,” she repeats with an impish grin, and they both leave it at that.

 

So, she never learned _why_ the desert was so horrible. She knew that it _was_ , though. She’d gotten Emojiit to confess that much to her before he’d promptly turned into a tree (not an Epiphous tree, as he’d hoped, but a gnarled Shauntan shoot. He was, by far, the ugliest tree she’d ever seen, but he stood proudly in the center of her garden). That tree, she laid the dying god underneath. It seemed fitting.

 

Töor’s garden was much better than both the forest or the desert. It was filled with magic and flora and fauna and everything that she loved (Emojiit included). In the area where the Drugneel Caves would come to be, Edënwas more than just buried beneath the earth. It _was_ the earth, in every sense of the word. Lithos was Edën, and Edën was Lithos, the forgotten pieces of the world.

 

And oh, Edën really was the best place she could’ve dragged Daelius to. Though he didn’t regain consciousness until those long ninety-three days were over, his body healed exponentially. Broken limbs were healed and shattered joints and ligaments mended themselves. The sockets of his eyes protruded outwards, and were no longer empty holes. He was growing.

 

When he finally did wake up, Töor wasn’t there to see it. Perhaps Emojiit did, perhaps he didn’t. It didn’t matter much because he was a tree and she was a god, and neither had spoken to the other in centuries. He woke on an autumn morning too many days after he’d fallen asleep. He was lying under a Shauntan tree filled with apples, the full boughs sweeping low to carry the burden of the ripe fruits. A million trees just like it surrounded him, each one with a different fruit. Somehow, they were all perfectly ripe. He wasn’t going to question that. He knew from experience that magic was nonsensical.

 

He took a glance upwards, and the summer sun glittered through the wispy clouds. Birds sang soulful symphonies and a stray grasshopper clicked leg and wing together before jumping across his field of vision. It was calm and quiet. The noise lifted, the static of his dreams completely absent. It was real in a way that never was, but he knew he was awake.

 

Most people would react differently to awakening in a strange place by themselves. As it happens, Daelius is not most people. He was not afraid to waking like that because he knew what had happened. That is, he knew _exactly_ what had happened and he was simply grateful for being alive. He could mourn and panic some other time, but at that moment, he just wanted to smell the flowers.

 

Night fell, the starlit sky slowly overtaking the brighter blue as the sun fell. He looked at the flowers and thought of nothing else. Jeromni flowers, he recognized, mingled in with a flower he couldn’t recall. Daelius looks, and he sees.

 

“They call them sunbeam flowers,” someone says from behind him. He doesn’t turn around.

 

“And why is that?” he almost doesn’t ask. The stranger walks closer, plops down next to him, and shrugs.

 

“Because they glow.” And sure enough, the small, pointed flower is lighting like a blue lantern. The pattern pulses rhythmically and Daelius breathes out a long exhale.

 

After what could be forever but was probably a minute, he turns to look at the stranger. She, in return, looks at him. She’s old, with deep-set wrinkles and crinkles and skin made of leather. She’s old, but she carries a certain sense of youthfulness about her. He, in turn, is the opposite.

 

“You’ve been out for awhile,” she starts, eyeing him like he might break into pieces. The joke is on her, though, because he’s already in shambles.

 

He sighs, takes a breath, and slumps against the tree. “...how long?” he asks with the kind of cautious vulnerability that reminds her of baby birds learning to fly (or recovering from a particularly nasty fall).

 

“Ninety-three days,” she says softly, and he sinks a little further. That was...a long time, by anyone’s means. She must have seen the look on his face, because she went on, “hey now, you look like you’ve seen a Dadr.”

 

He doesn’t answer. He hasn’t, but if he did he wouldn’t be surprised. By all laws, he should be dead. He buries his face in his hands and doesn’t cry. He doesn’t, but he almost does, and the unshed tears burn in his eyes. The old woman rubs his back, and he falls into the caring arms of a stranger. He’s so _tired_ and he could fall asleep right then and there. A moment later, he does.

 

The next day, the two gods wake in each other’s embrace. It’s a nice, purely platonic thing meant for comfort. It works.

 

They eat a meal of jerky and rice and eggs and berries that Töor calls Umplucht. It’s odd, but it tastes good enough to Daelius’ stomach that he eats seven bowls in fifteen minutes. Of course, that he hasn’t eaten in nearly a hundred days certainly helps. And it’s only after they eat that they realize they don’t know the other’s name.

 

“Töor," the woman says without prompting. It’s as though they share thoughts, or can hear the other’s. The boy nods in acknowledgment and replies.

 

“Daelius.” She smiles.

 

“‘Of the stars?’ That’s neat,” she starts, “my name just means ‘woman who digs.’” She chuckles and Daelius’ uneven heartbeat settles a bit. His heart is still coiled like a spring, but it’s a little easier for him to breathe.

 

They go on like that for weeks, talking and resting together like old friends. Töor teaches Daelius how to tend to the garden, and in return Daelius teaches Töor the secrets of the stars.

 

“It’s like a book,” he tells her. “You just have to know how to read it.” She laughs.

 

“You’re a rain god. Why’s everything about you have to do with stars?” she asks, and he smiles for a moment. It’s a wistful little thing and it passes before it fully emerges.

  
“It’s complicated,” he begins after a couple seconds. She nods, empathetic. _Is it ever._ He takes a moment, then two, and keeps going, “her name is Fael.”


	2. 1.2

_"Do be cautious with the night,_

_it'll sweep you up and drown your light."_

 

-:-

 

 

-:-

 

Her name is Fael, and she came from the stars. “The goddess of divinity and virtue,” they called her because they didn’t know, didn’t know what her true purpose was.

 

Daelius knew better. She was the goddess of the stars, of light and stardust and mist. She was Patyll,  _ medioras  _ of the universe. She was Shiniiva, destroyer of planets and dying stars. She was Arcedemis, warrior and savior to the unloved. She was so many things. Of course they couldn’t call her a rain god or a war god or a beauty god when she was  _ so much more _ .

 

He met her in the rain, ironically enough. In Asyr the weather was always humid and pleasant. It never rained, and he hated it there, but such was his nature. Daelius longed for the storm.

 

He hated Asyr’s climate so much that on nights when he should’ve been sleeping, he snuck out into the mortal world and brewed a mighty storm filled with thunder and lighting and rain (given he could convince Chido and Mashi, the goddesses of lighting and thunder, to join in). On one particularly stormy day, he stood at the top of the tallest mountain and screamed along with the rain. Across the valley, someone screamed back.

 

They did this, and would continue to do this, for the next several hundred years. Screaming over a deserted valley, they grew close. Odd, yes, but true.

 

The first time they met face-to-face was not when Daelius learned of her beauty. No, he knew she was beautiful beyond belief since the first time she cried back. It was a story often told, though rarely in the original circumstances. A lonely child screams into the abyss and, with a voice made of echoes and stars, it screams back.

 

Nothing about her stayed the same. Her eyes changed colors as often as the sky itself did, and she wore her skin and hair like clothing. She was unpredictable and unmistakable and utterly entrancing. In the cold of his own rain, Daelius found warmth in a kindred soul.

 

Her name was Fael and his was Daelius. At first they loved, then they were in love, and then they were love itself. They were the heavens and the hells mingled together in a way no two others could ever hope to achieve. They did not marry, and they did not need to. No official paper or string or ring or promise could be stronger than the one they had already made, that first day on the mountainside in the rain.

 

They didn’t need to proclaim their love; it was common knowledge. They did it anyway. Each one loved the other, dearly, and anyone with an ounce of awareness knew this.

 

They took each other across the universe, hand wrapped in loving hand. And during that journey, they learned much. Daelius grew to be an excellent marksman, and Fael became a skilled weaver. After, they shared their knowledge with the other. All was well.

 

But all was not well. Despite their happiness, despite their joy and love and passion, they were in despair. For they were gods, and they were not mortal. They aged, yes, and they died, true, but gods had children once every Shliu moon. They had tried, over and over and over again, but it seemed as though Fael simply could not conceive. Witches and doctors, fellow gods and mortal men; neither could help them. Fael cried and the rain cried for Daelius. Even in the stars there is rain, and during that time there was much of it.

 

They never truly recovered, but time didn’t wait for anyone. They returned to Asyr from their journey in the stars, and were almost completely met with great welcome. The only hitch in the greeting came in the form of one of their greatest friends. He refused to speak to them and would not look them in the eye.

 

“What did I do, Ajiur?” Daelius asks when he catches the god of fire in the observatory the polar gods had built together a lifetime ago. He gets a cold stare in return as Ajiur walks away. Daelius sighs and turns to the stars for an answer. He does not find one. Instead, he finds his answer thirteen hundred years later.

 

They were sleeping. Two gods, wrapped loosely around each other, sleeping like the dead. Fael was a heavy sleeper. Daelius was not, but, in those moments where his reason met his being, he drifted into the outer reaches of sleep where even a friend hellbent on destroying you cannot wake you.

 

Ajiur moved like a cat; one moment he was at the door, and in the next he was dragging Daelius to his open french doors — french doors that led to a balcony that hung over the edge of Asyr. It was slow, as the fire god held a much smaller stature than that of the mountainous rain god who was all brawn.

 

(“And no brain,” Ajiur said a million years prior. Daelius laughed and wrapped an arm around the younger’s willowy shoulders. In a world long forgotten, Ajiur looks down and smiles in the privy of his own universe.) Fael opened her eyes, suddenly and silently jarred awake for no reason other than Fate.

 

Ajiur looked at Daelius, and Fael looked at Ajiur. Her breath hitched, the thoughts of a million minds running through her single frame. And then, in that very moment, Ajiur made a decision. He pulled and he tugged with all the pent-up rage of a neglected animal and he threw Daelius over the edge of Asyr.

 

Daelius opened wide brown eyes and watched his friend smile as the rain god fell. He gasped, he heaved, and then he cried during the minutes it took for his body to meet with the earth, and all he could think about was how that had been the first time he’d seen Ajiur smile, ever. Lithos met skin met shattered bone met what should have been death. It wasn’t death, but it might as well have been. Fael was gone and he was gone and everything that mattered was  _ gone _ .

 

He stutters out his story, and T ö or takes it in with a single breath. She breathes in, scrambles for something to say, and breathes out. T ö or doesn’t say anything. She was never one for words.

 

Eventually, she does speak.

 

“I’m sorry,” she rasps, and Daelius’ face drops like it’s been thrown off a balcony by its best friend. He doesn’t want  _ sorry. _ Sorry didn’t help anyone, not in a million years.

 

T ö or must be a mind-reader, because she starts to backtrack before his countenance starts to shift with the fluidity of an Eeyn changing shape. She raises a hand in surrender and redacts her statement.

 

“Alright, alright. I’m not sorry?” she asks only because she’s unsure what else she can say. Daelius blinks, blinks again, blinks a third time, and laughs. It’s a low-pitched thing that reminds T ö or of the calls made by hellves in the dead of night. They echo across the desert plains of Koira like the whispering sound of rain against a starlit sky, and his laugh fills the endless garden of Ed ën, projecting off invisible walls.

 

“Hilarious,” she mutters, giving the boy a long look (because that’s what he was, god or no: a boy, and a broken one at that). He smiles at her, but it’s a broken, jagged thing filled with the bitter resentment of an untreated victim. She pointedly doesn’t smile back.

 

He turns to her. “And what might your story be?” he asks with the grace of a broken man masquerading as a functional one.  T ö or raises an eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed.

 

“My story?” she asks. “Now that’s a tale.” But she doesn’t tell him, not yet. Not when she isn’t sure herself, a lingering doubt whispering lies and unmade truths in her ear.

 

“Please?” he asks, and she sighs. Perhaps, she thinks, there are some things she can say, things she knows without doubt.

 

He asks again and she tells him, reluctantly, about her youth, about the wind that whipped her hair and the cold winters that bit at her bare feet. She tells him about the girl Kylla who burst into flames when it snowed, and Emojiit, her first and only friend.

 

She tells him much, and they trade stories like children bartering and switching sweets, but she doesn’t tell him everything. Not about the tingling sensation at the base of her neck that told her it was all lies, and not about the fading dreams she gets of people and faces she doesn’t recognize. (She doesn’t tell him, but if perhaps she had, it would be a different story.)

 

When she tells him about the waters she used to sail in makeshift boats, he laughs at her. Töor scowls, unhappy with being the source of jest, but doesn’t protest because the laugh he has then is much more real than any other laugh she’s heard from him before.

 

She tells him, he tells her, and then they listen as the wind tells them both.


End file.
